5th April, 2022
YWSP winners announced!
The winners of this year’s Young Walter Scott Prize have been announced! Taking the top spot in the 11-15 years category is Leo Wilson (left, above) from Oxfordshire for his story For the Love of the Sun, while Oliver Dhir (right, above) from Glasgow, author of A Lost Generation, has won the 16-19 years category. You can read these and the other winning stories by clicking on the links in the list below.
For the Love of the Sun is set in China, before the Cultural Revolution. Leo Wilson explains: “While trying to find a historical time period, I talked to my grandmother about her experience in communist China. The stories of my great-great grandpa being beaten for hiding some pottery and my grandma being sent away to a remote village resonated with me. In the Great Leap Forward a new path was forged. With the luxury of hindsight, we know this to be a failure, but the citizens of China accepted this ideology with great optimism. The result was a dark patch in China’s history including one of the greatest famines ever recorded.”
“I’ve always written stories… I spend time thinking about what I’m going to write and then just work on it for half an hour every day for about a month: perfecting it, thinking about the story, making every line count. I like writing historical fiction because it’s fun to see the impacts of history and how it changes perspective of how you view your life.”
A Lost Generation is set during the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic, and was inspired by a photograph of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus in 1993, and a recent newspaper report similarly describing children who had lived through the Covid pandemic as a ‘lost generation’. Oliver Dhir explains:
“We have come of age in a pandemic, stuck inside. Yet we are still here. Most of us have made it through, and we can begin to heal. We’re not ‘lost’. With the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the community was decimated and nobody seemed to care – no one seemed to realise the magnitude of the loss. The community had to rebuild from the ground up. Survivors mourn the loss of an entire generation of friends and were expected to continue their lives as if they had not experienced more profound loss in a few years than most do in a lifetime.”
“I’ve always enjoyed creative writing and world building. But, as a young, queer person, I always felt underrepresented in fiction, so my solution was to just write myself in. I can in no way do justice to the lives of the victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but I hope my story will make at least a small difference somewhere.”
The two winners each receive a £500 travel grant, their stories will be published in this year’s Young Walter Scott Prize Anthology, and they are invited to the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, in June to be presented with their prizes.
Runners-up and highly commended young writers were also awarded in each age category. In the 11-15 age group, two runners-up were awarded: Rafi Ahmad for his story set in 1947 at the time of the partition of Kashmir; and Beatrix Heath-Hassell for her World War One tale. There were also four highly commended writers: Hana Benlalam for her story about the French Revolution; Ellie Karlin for her take on China in 210 BC; Fran Tartaglia for her imagining of Pompeii; and Shaun Whittaker for his depiction of Winston Churchill.
In the category for writers aged 16-19, two runners-up were awarded: Eve Naden for her portrayal of the persecution of the Jews during World War Two; and Mia Scattergood for her surreal story set in the American deep south of the 1950s. Atlas Weyland Eden was highly commended for his new take on Sir Walter Scott himself.
The judging panel, which this year included new judge Hannah Lavery, said:
“It’s an exciting moment when the big bundle of stories longlisted for the Young Walter Scott Prize arrives. What subjects will the writers have chosen this time? As usual, the variety has been extraordinary, with stories set all around the world at many different periods of history. What they all have in common is originality, inventiveness and sheer enthusiasm, but our winners and runners-up have gone that bit further, producing with a sure touch stories written from the heart. They truly deserve to be celebrated.”
A full list of the winners is below, and you can read each of the stories by clicking on the links. The eleven stories will be published in the Young Walter Scott Prize anthology, which will be available in print form in early June.
The 2021 YWSP Roll of Honour
16 to 19 Age Group
Winner:
Oliver Dhir, aged 18, from Glasgow
Runners-up:
Eve Naden, aged 20, from Cheshire
Mia Scattergood, aged 16, from Cheshire
The Best Peach Jam in the State
Highly Commended:
Atlas Weyland Eden, aged 16, from Devon
11 to 15 age-group
Winner:
Leo Wilson, aged 14, from Oxfordshire
Runners-up:
Rafi Ahmad, aged 14, from Essex
Beatrix Heath-Hassell, aged 13, from London
The Diary of a White Feather Girl
Highly Commended:
Hana Benlalam, aged 16, from Oxfordshire
Ellie Karlin, aged 13, from Bristol
Fran Tartaglia, aged 14, from North Yorkshire
Shaun Whittaker, aged 13, from Lancashire
Our heartiest congratulations to all the winners!